Video games on the frontier of design

Video games have come to embody much more than just an outlet for fun. Their intricate designs have created entire universes that can bring users from around the globe together both online and offline. As this fan base keeps growing, the Victoria & Albert Museum (V&A) in London is exploring these games as digital design objects in a new exhibition "Videogames: Design/Play/Disrupt."

The exhibition has dedicated an entire room to the social and political dimensions of computer games, exploring the sensitivities the gaming industry can address in unique ways — and how it succeeds or fails at doing so. From gender and sexual identity to race to language, games have the power to allow people to walk in someone else's proverbial shoes.

Some games push frontiers in current public debates, such as Mafia 3 (seen here), a game which pits a black protagonist against all sorts of social challenges including rampant racism, embodied by the Ku Klux Klan in the US. While some of the images in the game might be disturbing, they also provide an opportunity for gamers to interact with issues that continue to plague the real world.

There are also a number of social issues that the gaming industry has to address offline. One of the most criticized aspects of video games is the fact that more than two-thirds of gaming executives around the world are straight, white men. Successful female designers from other ethnicities, like Jenny Jiao Hsia (seen here), are still in the minority.

Some games take the design aspect of their narrative more seriously than others. The 2013 game Kentucky Route Zero (seen here) highlights mid-century architecture and brutalist design as part of its overall look and feels, somewhat like a film noir set in shades of blue. However, the popular game also features optical illusions and deals creatively with 3D graphics.

Some video games go to imaginative extremes to fashion galaxies and planets for users to explore. No Man's Sky, released in 2016, is one of the games that allows enthusiasts to explore a science fiction narrative. Each planet has its own ecosystems with unique forms of flora and fauna, as well as different alien lifeforms on different planets. The possibilities in this game are truly endless.

Video games are scrutinized from all angles to achieve the look and feel that their creators hope to create. At the V&A exhibition, an entire video wall focuses solely on the color testing of the game No Man's Sky. There are more than 18 quintillion planets for gamers to visit in this game.

The massive gaming industry provides livelihoods to a fast-growing group of people around the world. Whether it's in the design process, coding, marketing or merchandising, video games have become an outlet of popular culture similar to Hollywood movies or the music charts. With easier access to video games, both audiences and developers are expected to keep growing in numbers.

The exhibition's curator Marie Foulston (center) acknowledges that "Videogames: Design/Play/Disrupt" is not the first exhibition on computer games but the "first of its kind." "Design is the lens through which we are looking at video games," she says. "This is our curatorial language. We hope to challenge peoples' perceptions about why video games are this way."

Video games have always had competitive elements, but these days esports attract enough fans to fill an entire Olympic Stadium. This image shows the final stage of the 2017 World Championships held at the Beijing National Stadium. Those competing at the highest level are celebrated like superstars in gaming circles.

The new exhibition stands in stark contrast to the ornate Victorian buildings of the Victoria & Albert Museum in South Kensington, but is considered to be an extension of ongoing efforts of its Design, Architecture and Digital Department in archiving digital objects. "Videogames: Design/Play/Disrupt" at the Victoria & Albert Museum runs through February 24, 2019.